The Talented Miss Farwell: A Novel

Written by Emily Gray Tedrowe

Narrated by Allyson Ryan

Catch Me If You Can meets Patricia Highsmith in this electrifying page-turner of greed and obsession, survival and self-invention that is a piercing character study of one unforgettable female con artist.

""Becky Farwell is one of the most wickedly compelling characters I've read in ages -- a Machiavellian marvel, a modern Becky Sharp, a character to root for despite your better judgment -- and her story, both topical and timeless, will knock you off your feet."" -- Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers


At the end of the 1990s, with the art market finally recovered from its disastrous collapse, Miss Rebecca Farwell has made a killing at Christie’s in New York City, selling a portion of her extraordinary art collection for a rumored 900 percent profit. Dressed in couture YSL, drinking the finest champagne at trendy Balthazar, Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. To some, the elusive Miss Farwell is a shark with outstanding business acumen. To others, she’s a heartless capitalist whose only interest in art is how much she can make.

But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely—a quiet single woman known as Becky who still lives in her family’s farmhouse, wears sensible shoes, and works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller. 

No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky; she’s the last one in the office every night, crunching the numbers. Somehow, her neighbors marvel, she always finds a way to get the struggling town just a little more money. What Pierson doesn’t see—and can never discover—is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, “borrowed” funds used to finance her art habit. Though she quietly repays Pierson when she can, the business of art is cutthroat and unpredictable. 

But as Reba Farwell’s deals get bigger and bigger, Becky Farwell’s debt to Pierson spirals out of control. How long can the talented Miss Farwell continue to pull off her double life? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063036024

Emily Gray Tedrowe

Emily Gray Tedrowe is the author of two previous novels, BLUE STARS and COMMUTERS. She earned a PhD in literature from New York University and a BA from Princeton University. She has received an Illinois Arts Council award as well as fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. A frequent book reviewer for USA Today and other publications, Tedrowe also writes essays, interviews, and short stories. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Reviews for The Talented Miss Farwell

[tsmom1219 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Would have been three stars except for one thing.

I live in Champaign. The section of the book that takes place here makes it clear that the author did no research about the campus or medical facilities here. There is no reason for Becky to bring her father to Champaign for a medical appointment when Peoria, Rockford, and Joliet are all closer. The Urbana campus didn’t even have a medical school in the 1980s.

This occurred early enough in the book that it colored my perception of the rest of the novel. If you’re going to use real places in fiction, get the details right.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting read, and while the flaws made the main character, I wanted a little more from her.

[nyiper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrific writing and such a fascinating story based, in part on a historical event in Dixon, Illinois, in 2012 where a female government employee managed to embezzle $54 million dollars over 20 years. Tedrowe really ran with this idea and the book is really fun to read because you can't help liking so many things about Becky..."Reba." But oh dear, the overlapping and compounding problems she caused---with the idea in her mind that it would all come out right in the end. Whew!

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Becky Farwell is a whiz at math. Because of this skill, she is able to save her father’s business for a bit. However, due to their financial problems, Becky isn’t able to go to college. Instead, she takes a course in accounting and begins working for the town. She quickly moved up the ranks, but not before noticing some errors in the books.Meanwhile, Becky is bitten by the art bug. She gets a crash course in how to buy and sell art from a man she meets during a failed attempt to purchase a painting. Driven by her obsession with art, Becky starts skimming money from the town, promising to return it when she can sell her art at a profit. Becky also enters into a friendship with a high school classmate, Ingrid, because of Ingrid incredible kindness to Becky.I felt this book was a bit dry, never quite hitting its mark. It talked a lot about art, but I never felt invested in it. I did want Becky to succeed, if only to help out the town. Thanks to The Book Club Girl, Harper Collins and Net Galley for the ARC. #TheTalentedMissFarwell #EmilyGrayTedrowe#NetGalley #HarperCollins #TheBookClubGirl

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Greed and obsession are packaged in Becky Farwell, and even though you know she is greedy and out for her own interests, the reader will like her. Even at the end after she has been caught for embezzling city funds from the city for which she worked; you will like her. She may not have gone to college, but she’s got math smarts which keeps moving her up in the financial department of the small city outside of Chicago where she lives. Her problem is that she likes art. By this I mean EXPENSIVE art and as she figures out how to move the money to a city bank account that only she can access the funds her obsession grows and she finds herself moving among the big art aficionados not only of New York City but the world. Her double life works for an astonishing long time, and when it crashes, the FBI has become involved. I enjoyed the audio version of the book. Well read, with wonderful voices for different characters. I only have quibbles with a few minor details. The town of Pierson has a Petunia Festival and she helps plant petunia “bulbs”. Since when do petunias come from bulbs. As her double life becomes stressful, she begins having health problems. One of the issues is skin rashes. She reads an article about a woman who had a terrible rash on her head and during the night, she scratched it so much she ended up scratching brain matter. Where on the head does the skull not protect the brain? I can’t see how this is possible. Although the reader knows Becky is doomed if she doesn’t get her embezzlement under control, and the ending is probably known after the first two chapters, the road she takes in collecting art is interesting.

[kayebarley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to love Miss Farwell. As it turns out, I kinda like her, sorta.

[alekee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I began this book and met this smart young woman, Becky, as she is finishing up high school. She is brilliant when it comes to math, and has been helping, or earning money, doing math papers all of her HS years, and she has taken over the management, or financial part of her father's business, so as much as she may want, college for this brilliant girl is not on the plate.She begins her career with her local town, and again with her brilliant mind, she flourishes and advances, has she found her niche.We follow this shy young woman as she blossoms and spreads her wings, and we cringe as she uses her gifts in a way to aid her obsession.We wonder how long she can keep up what she is doing? Will her health give, or will her deeds be found out?There is another world out there, and we are going deep into the bowels of it with Reba, and in the end, was it worth it?I received this book through Edelweiss and the Publisher Custom House. and was not required to give a positive review.

[beachbaby1124 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read The Talented Miss Farwell in one sitting, but at the end I was dissatisfied. The story of a small town girl who discovers the luxurious world of expensive art, but must create a new identity to enjoy it, all while stealing from her small town job to support sounded intriguing at first. But by the end of the story I was doing anything but rooting for the protagonist. I never understood why she couldn't be herself at home or in the cities she went to art shows. Miss Farwell as so lot as a person I almost felt sad for her, then I remembered her horrible crimes and demanded more . Overall this was a good read and I know nothing about art so learned a little bit about a cutthroat world.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I received an Advance Reader's Edition of The Talented Miss Farwell via LT Early Reviewers program, I gazed at the title (a possible nod to The Talented Mr. Ripley) and the cover design that has been a popular trope of recent thriller novels: a face that is partially revealed by a torn paper cover. In this case, though, it appears to be a paper wrapper revealing a portrait painting. That's apparently because the titular Miss Farwell is a small-town treasurer and comptroller who embezzles money to support her art collection and the jet-setting involved for high stakes art purchases. As such, thriller fans may not find this to be as expected. However, I requested this not because I thought or hoped it was a thriller. It was because I'm a art/art history lover. So, what did I think?I was fascinated at how Becky Farwell figures out how to embezzle money from her town, even with its crumbling infrastructure, to support her addiction (as Reba Farwell) to buying and selling art, and how she was able to get away with it for so long. Would readers that are less interested in art find this as compelling as I did? I don't know. But I can say I read this in one day.

[drneutron_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Becky Farwell is City Comptroller in a little Illinois town down on luck. Reba Farwell is an art collector at the top of her game. Except that Reba and Becky are the same person, with Reba financing her lifestyle by skimming millions from Becky’s town accounts. Tedrowe’s given us, in spite of the reference to The Talented Mr Ripley, not a sociopathic antihero, but an art-obsessed Midwest woman trying desperately to be sophisticated and worldly-wise. Advertised as a thriller, it’s not. Instead, it’s a story of a slow slide deeper and deeper into a hole from which she can’t escape, and how that slide takes everyone around her along for the ride.

[hairball_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dare I say that this was a charming read? It isn’t really, although I sped right through it. Miss Farwell is so deluded and truly, she should be hideously unpleasant to read about, but one can’t help but root for her to pull off her little Ponzi scheme. The contrast between her accountant by day/art dealer by night is so delicious to behold, as is her determination to move past the constraints of her birth (gender, socioeconomics). A man in her position, at that time, would have been celebrated as a genius. Alas, if we had beaches, this would make a fine read.

[bricker-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderfully written tale of the desire to be more than you were born to be and passion, bordering on true addiction. The ending was inevitable, but it was still tough to watch it come.

[drsyko_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ms. Farwell is, indeed, talented. She's a talented liar, thief, art collector, friend, and town employee. She's a complex, full-fleshed character, and I found her to be both horrifying and intriguing. This book provides an interesting look into the cutthroat and very expensive world of collecting high-end art, something about which the author clearly has some not inconsiderable knowledge. I really enjoyed learning about that world, while also being very glad that I will never be a part of it! This tale of a woman obsessed with art, and of how her obsession eventually takes her and an entire town down into an abyss, is read into the night good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was tightly paced, both plot and character driven, unusual in its themes, extremely well-written and without an ounce of superfluous details, and compelling. I highly recommend this book!

[dpappas_25 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book follows Becky Farwell (also known as Reba) who works in her town's local government office. After an incident with an accidental refund check Becky Farewell finds herself becoming an art buyer on the taxpayer's dime. Becky's scheme grows bigger and bigger and she must work to keep it secret. This was a book that I could not put down because I thought maybe there would be some twist or something explosive but to be honest you could pretty much see everything coming. There were no surprises for me. I would have liked some sort of suspense or twist towards the end but there really wasn't for me. It was still relatively enjoyable though.[I won this book through a Librarything Early Reviewers giveaway.]

[fjumonvi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a high-school student in small-town Illinois, Becky Farwell was great at math. When her father left some financial records from his failing business lying about the house, Becky read them and swiftly figured out how to turn the business around. There was no money for college, so Becky found a job in the town's bookkeeping department and quickly rose to the position of financial officer. A chance foray into an art gallery awakened in Becky a passion for art that she didn't know she had. When a refund check for an overpayment crossed her desk at work, she realized that no one would ever miss it--and the amount was nearly identical to the price of the painting she HAD to have. Thus began Becky's double life, which led her to the foremost art galleries and auction houses in Chicago, New York, and abroad. Known in the art world as Reba, she escalated her activity, buying more numerous and more significant (i.e., expensive) works of art while increasingly sapping funds from her hometown's treasury--funds the town needed badly. She was going to pay it back, all of it, but then she discovered completist collecting....On the surface, this is the well-crafted story of a fraud. Read deeper to find a realistic depiction of a mania and a cautionary tale of how easily the moral boundary between right and wrong can blur. Like other reviewers, I could hardly put it down.

[written-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I feel like another reviewer. I really enjoyed the book but after about 2/3 through I was ready for it to be over. Becky lives in a small Illinois town. She's a whiz at all math but can't afford to go to collage. She gets a job working at City Hall and before long becomes the towns financial officer. She handles all the money issues and soon has discovered how sloppy the bookkeeping has been. It doesn't take much to start "borrowing" sums of money to purchase art for her new passion. Becky lives a double life. Small town financial officer and big time art collector. Soon the small amounts "borrowed" from the city turns into millions and the town is going bankrupt. Becky finally gets caught but is she really sorry?

[loraineo_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love reading about con artists ! Great book . Miss Farwell becomes a con artist at an early age and gets deeper and deeper into her double life. Easy to read. The author had a nice writing style, kept me interested.

[nmarti-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh, what to say and how to say it in reviewing this book about a small town girl who becomes a woman leading a double life (as the town finance officer and as a fine art collector/seller)? I read it in a day, anxious to learn the fate of Becky aka Reba. Becky Farwell is smart, motivated and studies hard to be best at her job and to be an expert in fine art. She helps her only real friend, Ingrid, with money, gifts and emotional support. She manages the town's money and initiates creative activities that bring money and fellowship to the town. Yet at the same time, she pulls off a huge theft of town funds over a period of a few years. She keeps getting further and further into "debt" and cannot stop herself from keeping the con game going. Neither likable nor evil enough to be a real villain, she left me feeling almost indifferent to the outcome she met. As I said, however, I didn't put the book down until I finished it!

[yukon92 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received an ARC of this book through the LTER in exchange for my honest opinion. This book is (somewhat) in the vein of "Can You Ever Forgive Me?", "The Art of the Steal", and even "Catch me if you can". When I started reading this book I was enjoying it quite a lot, but as the book wore on I could only hope that it was finished soon.... I don't know what I disliked, but it just seemed somehow disjointed (at least to me) and I was very glad when I finished it.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very fast-paced novel about small-town Midwestern municipal employee slash art collector Becky Farwell, who finds a, shall we say, imaginative way to fund her fancy habits. While there were brief moments where I felt things were a bit one-dimensional, overall I found this a good read, even as I loathed nearly all of the characters.